r/RenewableEnergy • u/DVMirchev • 7d ago
Germany hits 62.7% renewables in 2024 electricity mix, with solar contributing 14% – pv magazine International
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2025/01/03/germany-hits-62-7-renewables-in-2024-energy-mix-with-solar-contributing-14/26
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u/Jacko10101010101 7d ago
whats the blue ? i feel like they use low hydroelectric. can someone tell what are the colors?
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u/MarcLeptic 7d ago
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u/Jacko10101010101 7d ago
thanks. so the hydroelectric is low, could be better if u ask me
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u/MarcLeptic 7d ago
Hydroelectric is a gift from nature. If you have it, you have it. There’s not much you can do if you don’t though.
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u/clvnmllr 7d ago
You spit in the face of nature’s gift when you build hydroelectric. It’s horrible for river ecosystems
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u/verstehenie 7d ago
Their neighbors to the mountainous south already speak approximately the same language…
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u/MarcLeptic 7d ago edited 7d ago
Not sure if you mean they should import it? This post is about % of generation, not load
Edit: oh. Heh heh. No.
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u/iqisoverrated 5d ago
Everywhere where hydroelectric is economically feasible it's already been built up (basically already for a century or so).
You need the right topography for this. Extremely mountainous regions like Austria and Switzerland can cover large parts of their power needs from hydro, but that's not possible for germany.
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u/CaliTexan22 7d ago
It’s about choices, and what you’ll be willing to tolerate for ratepayers & taxpayer pricing, isn’t it?
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u/IsThereAnythingLeft- 7d ago
I thought I saw this figure at 40% the other day. Which is correct?
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u/_slightconfusion 7d ago edited 7d ago
The German newspaper "Zeit" has an interactive chart that is updated every 15mins. Its basically a liveticker about all sorts of energy related stats for Germany:
https://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/energiemonitor-strompreis-gaspreis-erneuerbare-energien-ausbau
In the first row of graphics on the right in green color are the stats for how much energy was produced by renewables ("Erneuerbare"). The big % number shows how much was produces in total yesterday and below in smaller writing "30-Tage-Durchschnitt" is the 30-day-average.
The right most graphic shows the mix of energy sources for the production of electricity (purple = gas, brown = coal, grey = other.. rest like wind, solar and biomass are pretty self explanatory ^^)
Some of it comes from this src: https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?c=DE&interval=month&source=public
[But the Zeit graphics and charts are much nicer and so much more readable :D]
Hope this helps so you can check the data for yourself!
edit: switched left and right by accident. whoopsi..
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u/EntertainmentUsual87 7d ago
I hate that nuclear isn't turned on...it is absolutely a green technology. When you turn it on, you see that nuclear dropped to zero and we went from 200TWh to 260TWh.
I have read that anti-nuclear environmental groups were funded by big oil in the past, and while I have no proof, it totally makes sense.
If we want baseload that's super reliable, fail-safe nuclear designs are very rock solid.
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u/BoreJam 7d ago
Why are investors so wary of nuclear then?
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u/Lease_Tha_Apts 6d ago
Because it's politically controversial to the extent that there have been completely safe plants built and then decommissioned without producing a single kW.
Investors aren't going to put in billions for an endeavor that is one bad news cycle away from setting all their money on fire. They have been burned several times in the 70s and 80s.
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u/Stahlstaub 5d ago
Nuclear plants are pretty expensive... And we don't know where to store the remains yet... Specially germany engineered new Nuclear plant types, but didn't build any new types for centuries...
Personally i'd rather have them under control in germany, than uncontrolled in countries that don't have the money to pay the upkeep...
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u/jka76 5d ago
Germany would be in quite deep problems with days of blackouts if not for all neighbors helping them during cloudy days without wind. They are causing huge spikes in electricity price
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u/DVMirchev 5d ago
Yea, that's how the single market work
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u/jka76 5d ago
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u/DVMirchev 5d ago
And what happened after that rant?
Nothing
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u/jka76 4d ago
Depends how much more it will happen.
Still, it does not make what Germany is doing right. They need to improve a lot.
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u/DVMirchev 4d ago
We'll see.
By the way, I do not hear them thanking Germany for the negative prices ;)
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u/jka76 4d ago
Negative prices might be also a problem = huge transport need => often an overload in transport network. I know that Poland had to install regulators on transit points with Germany as there were causing sever problems in windy times.
The biggest issue with renewables as they are being implemented now is unpredictability.
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u/DVMirchev 4d ago
False. You are mixing intermittentcy and unpredictability.
They are not the same.
In fact, wind and solar are extremely predictable for all TSO purposes - with modern meteorological models their output is predicted with more than 95% accuracy days in advance. That is more than enough for any TSO.
On the other hand, a Nuclear reactor, for example, is waay more unpredictable while being totally not intermittent. Why?
Because the automatic safety systems can take it off the grid in a matter of minutes without any notice. Totally unpredictable event. And all grids with 1 GW reactors are built around this totally unpredictable event. They know that 1 GW can disappear without notice at any given moment that's why they keep idle capacities to be able to react.
Keeping this capability all the time is not cheap and is never added to the price of the power coming from the nuclear plant ;)
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u/jka76 3d ago
English is not my first language. So I might use the terms in a wrong way. What I was thinking about is that the nuclear power plant will be delivering stable planned output on request. For solar and wind you depend on the nature who decides when you have energy. How would you call this?
As for the nuclear reactor getting off, I would like to see statistics of how many unplanned incidents like that happened and how it compares to other power sources. Do you have statistics somewhere?
Guess, spare capacity idle is needed for both nuclear as well as for solar and wind replacement. And IMHO this will grow with use of those. At least until we manage to regulate weather. Otherwise we need giant batteries somewhere and those are for all purposes idle capacity too.
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u/Stahlstaub 5d ago
But the neighbours don't complain about us, when we're giving them energy for free...
The spikes go in both directions...
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u/jka76 5d ago
https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/germanys-stressed-grid-is-causing-trouble-across-europe
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20241220-sweden-sees-red-over-germany-s-energy-policy
I'm not aware of Sweden, France or Poland generating huge spikes in Germany. Can you please share soiurces?
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u/Stahlstaub 5d ago
I mean that in some times we got overproduction and are basically paying for giving the energy away to other countries.
And that there are times we pay for getting energy from other countries.
The threat of a european blackout isn't that big, as there are articles that state, that german powerplants haven't even run at full capacity, as producing at full capacity might have been more expensive than buying it from other countries...
The problem in my opinion is that we don't have the capacity to transfer enough energy through germany... So it's easier to take the shorter routes to plants across the border...
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u/jka76 4d ago
The thing is that some overproduction is not compensating for the price jumps when there is lack of power in Germany AFAIK. I also fully agree that we need better transport network to transfer electricity across Europe. But also, reform of the market. I see no reason why countries outside Germany should pay for German one side decisions. Why Sweden suffer price spikes when they have no problem to supply themself without issue for cheap? Or Slovakia? And why we shall suffer overloads on our network when Germany has so much wind power that they can't even transfer it?
Don't take me wrong, I'm all for renewables. Have my solar, etc. But this needs to be improved.
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u/Stahlstaub 4d ago
It's an open market...
For example:
If sweden delivers 0.6MW to germany, why is their local price going up? Germany should pay for the extra power needed... Shouldn't have any impact on local prices...
A lot of maintenance cost applies if you use it or not... So selling energy should be beneficial for low costs...
Makes no sense to me what the media want to sell to us...
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u/jka76 4d ago
Problem with EU green policy is that the most expensive electricity production in any given day dictates the price for all. This was introduced as a support for renewables as they used to be (still in many cases are) the most expensive source. Side effect is, that even country like mine, where we overproduce and by all normal logic we should have cheap electricity, have an expensive one during low renewable production when fossil fuel backup power is fired up to cover the missing part. Those days, not only that missing part of electricity is expensive, but all ... So much for free market
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u/Stahlstaub 4d ago
If the system weren't that botched, we would have more than enough renewable storable energy... For example in germany the amount of bio gas plants is limited to a certain amount. So a lot of plants just shut down because they didn't get a quota... To my information it's not even limited by power, but by raw number of plants.
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u/jka76 3d ago
This I fully agree. Current system sucks. And seems that there is 0 will to correct it.
Bio gas .. what is it made of? Cow dunk or cutting trees?2
u/Stahlstaub 2d ago
Mostly methane of Cow or pig dung. Sometimes leftovers from corn production or other plants... Usually the stuff you can't sell. Also our wastewater facilities make a lot of biogas, which they usually burn in their electrical generators.
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u/CevahirCombo 7d ago
The numbers are right, the interpretation is not. Because of times with no wind or sun, 100% of the electricity generation capacity needs to be ready as backup, in the form of fossil power plants. This is not energy independence, it‘s madness. I live in Germany and people here live in a dream-world. They threat there lousy PV modules as if they were 24/7 power plants churning out green energy and someone somewhere will for sure build some battery, that keeps the whole country online for 2 weeks straight….
Prices went through the roof, regulation is choking what is not already dead (as usual in Germany), but still people think Germany can rescue the climate on its own. For the sake of having the moral high ground.
Don‘t get me wrong, I‘m 100% pro renewables, but you cannot and should not act against physical reality. And you should definitely not power off nuclear and coal unless you have the alternative running 24/7 at competitive prices.
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u/gandolfthe 7d ago
Whoa, we should not be putting coal and nuclear in the same sentence. Coal is the destroyer of worlds and nuclear can be a safe, reliable and low impact source of energy.
The real focus should be on pumping all the dam attention and money into geothermal using fracking tech. That is scalable and as close to renewable as we can come...
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u/Lease_Tha_Apts 6d ago
Nuclear and Renewables eat too much into each other's profits. The safe combo is renewables + batteries/coal or just nuclear.
Also, fracking is banned in most of Europe.
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u/Stahlstaub 5d ago
Geothermal yes, but not fracking. Nobody wants those chemicals in their drinking water... We europeans love our drinking water... We mostly drink tapwater and not imported bottled water...
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u/hadphild 7d ago
If every home / installation had 1-2 days storage this really does make renewables added to the network it allow the grid to be evened out. You will never get rid of the older plants. Nuclear in other countries could be your backup.
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u/I-suck-at-hoi4 7d ago
Yeah but that's expensive af. In Lazard's LCOE/LCOS report in the US home batteries are terribly expensive, iirc nearing 1 dollar per kWh stored in the worst cases. It's cool for people who want autarky or for tech bros but that's pretty much it, battery cells are better spent in utility storage or in EVs
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u/hadphild 7d ago
V2H and V2G is going to change everything.
Not everything is about money it should be how do I reduce carbon also be independent.
All new homes need to have renewables to be mandatory. 3 phase / heat pump / solar / grid connected but independent / 2 car chargers
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u/I-suck-at-hoi4 7d ago
That's idealistic but realistically you are just making prices raise for a rather low impact. It's just going to deter people away from new home construction and instead keep them cramped in existing real estate with none of what you mentioned, running on gas heating with a bad insulation. Better spend the available money in insulation and electrification.
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u/Bazookabernhard 7d ago
No way it‘s 1$. It used to be something like 20-30 cents (in Germany) but now it‘s in the ballpark of 10-20 cents and will get lower. DIY would be way below 10 cents. Installation, software, inverters etc are always costly for private owners. But capacity is getting cheaper, I’m sure in a few years you will be able to buy 40-50 kWh for 5000€/$ + fixed costs for electronics and installation.
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u/I-suck-at-hoi4 7d ago
Can't share a screen but it's page 20 of the LCOE+ report for 2024 : residential, 6 kW, 24 kWh, is in the 882-1101$/MWh range
Remember it's the US so EPC is a bit more expensive than Germany. But it's still pretty expensive, remember that you rarely go for complete discharges and that capacity worsens over time so the LCOS cost doesn't just boil down to price divided by 9000 full cycles
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u/MeteorOnMars 7d ago
A while back someone claimed to me that renewables would never be significant.
I asked him for a specific goalpost that would prove his statement wrong.
We settled on “a large country like Germany reaching 50% renewable electricity over a year”.
Today that goalpost is passed. Nice.